This video is starring the drag activist Frida Marida (Hani Assaf, LEB) and drag artist and academic Cassie Brødskive (Jens Martin Hartvedt Arvesen, NOR) presenting a raw response — touching, teasing, and perceiving the architecture of the Preus Museum, Norway’s National Museum for Photography, February 2022. The work can be read not only as a reaction to the building itself — the hierarchies and social structures of the institution and the place as a historical site — but also relating to the idea of ‘performing in front of the camera’ in a direct and intuitive manner, using the photographic print as a tool in such investigations. Tonight: Meet the people involved.

The work is made for the collaboration between Karmaklubb* and Preus Museum, Norway’s National Museum of Photography. Part of the Karmaklubb* ‘Queering the Museum’ investigations. Produced by Preus Museum and Hilde Herming, curator, on the occasion of Queer Culture Year / Skeivt kulturår 2022, with support from The Freedom of Expression Foundation / Stiftelsen Fritt Ord and The Ministry of Culture and Equality / Kulturdepartementet. Preus Museum collection 2022.

The screening is part of the National Museum’s programming during Queer Culture Year / Skeivt kulturår 2022 and part of the series Motstrøms, presenting films that entertain while bend and break boundaries. During 2022 we will screen both classics within queer cinema and new films taking form in the gaps between art and cinema.

Established sometime around 2018, Karmaklubb* has for several years been investigating various architectures — physical as well as virtual, historical, archival — and how they can be challenged and tried out, potentially changed through a direct approach to the use and the presence of bodies in those spaces. ‘Queering the museum’ is an ongoing project (2019–) and one example of such hands-on-research, or perhaps field work, that deals directly with houses representing archives, collections, our perception of history and truth, in particular art museums. Among the ‘cases’ are the old and new Munch Museum / MUNCH, Oslo; KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen; the National Museum of Norway, Oslo; and the above mentioned Preus Museum, Horten.